I read The Emergency with a knot in my stomach.

Thomas Fisher writes from inside a South Side ER at the height of the pandemic but what makes this book hit hardest is how close it all felt. I live in Chicago. I built and was glued to the COVID dashboards, watching the ICU bed counts, the case spikes, the race breakdowns. Fisher lived that data. He treated the people behind the numbers.

This isn’t just a doctor’s memoir. It’s a gut-punch portrait of what it means to care for patients, for a neighborhood and for a city that so often fails its most vulnerable. Much like the medical system in America. Fisher blends ER cases, personal history, and unflinching letters to patients who didn’t make it. The result is part medical narrative, part social indictment, and fully human.

He doesn’t shy away from the systemic failures: how racism, bureaucracy, and burnout shape outcomes long before someone reaches the ER doors. And yet, he stays. He keeps showing up. That quiet persistence through all the tough times is what stuck with me most.

Reading this felt like exploring the underside of all the charts I obsessed over in 2020, the stories the numbers couldn't tell. It's not comfortable reading, but it's beautiful in its humanity.

One of the most powerful books I’ve read in a long time.

Bookshop.org link